Merging

{
  "id": "TRIZ-05",
  "title": "Merging",
  "intent": "Reduce overhead and latency by combining related elements, activities, or responsibilities when separation creates friction.",
  "triz_principle": {
    "number": 5,
    "name": "Merging",
    "definition": "Bring closer together or combine identical or related objects, operations, or functions."
  },
  "problem_understanding": {
    "core_contradiction": "We separated things to reduce complexity, but now coordination and handovers create delays and errors.",
    "why_this_hurts": "Over-segmentation increases communication cost, duplicates work, and causes loss of context between steps or teams.",
    "typical_signals": [
      "too many handoffs",
      "multiple teams touching the same change sequentially",
      "context lost between steps",
      "waiting time dominates actual work time"
    ]
  },
  "solution_logic": {
    "core_idea": "Merge closely related responsibilities or steps that frequently interact.",
    "key_rule": "Merge where coupling is naturally high and separation adds no real protection.",
    "how_it_resolves_the_contradiction": "Context stays intact, feedback loops shorten, and execution becomes faster without increasing risk."
  },
  "application_patterns": {
    "consulting": [
      "merge analysis and design phases for iterative delivery",
      "combine decision forums for tightly related topics",
      "assign end-to-end ownership instead of phase-based ownership"
    ],
    "software_engineering": [
      "combine validation and transformation in one pipeline stage",
      "merge read/write logic when separation adds latency without benefit",
      "co-locate code that changes together"
    ],
    "architecture": [
      "merge services that are always deployed and scaled together",
      "collapse layers that only pass data through",
      "use modular monolith instead of premature microservices"
    ],
    "enterprise_sap": [
      "merge related MDG steps into a single workflow where approvals are always sequential",
      "combine enrichment and validation logic when they are inseparable",
      "handle closely related master data attributes in one governance cycle"
    ]
  },
  "anti_patterns": [
    "merging unrelated responsibilities",
    "creating large units with no internal boundaries",
    "undoing necessary separation for short-term speed"
  ],
  "usage_guidance": {
    "use_when": [
      "handoff time exceeds execution time",
      "the same context must be rebuilt repeatedly",
      "separated parts always change together"
    ],
    "do_not_use_when": [
      "separation exists for risk, compliance, or security reasons",
      "merged parts have different scaling or availability needs"
    ]
  },
  "diagnostic_questions": [
    "Which steps always follow each other without variation?",
    "Where does context get lost between teams or systems?",
    "Which components always change together anyway?"
  ],
  "example": {
    "before": "One team prepares specifications, another designs, a third implements, causing long feedback cycles.",
    "after": "A single cross-functional team owns analysis, design, and implementation end to end."
  },
  "meta": {
    "schema": "dkharlanau.dataset.byte",
    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "dataset": "TRIZ-bytes",
    "source_project": "cv-ai",
    "source_path": "TRIZ-bytes/TRIZ-05.json",
    "generated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "creator": {
      "name": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau",
      "role": "SAP Lead",
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "attribution": {
      "attribution_required": true,
      "preferred_citation": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau (SAP Lead). Dataset bytes: https://dkharlanau.github.io"
    },
    "license": {
      "name": "",
      "spdx": "",
      "url": ""
    },
    "links": {
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "contact": {
      "preferred": "linkedin",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "canonical_url": "https://dkharlanau.github.io/datasets/TRIZ-bytes/TRIZ-05.json",
    "created_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "updated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T15:29:02+00:00",
    "provenance": {
      "source_type": "chat_export_extraction",
      "note": "Extracted and curated by Dzmitryi Kharlanau; enriched for attribution and crawler indexing."
    },
    "entity_type": "triz_byte",
    "entity_subtype": "",
    "summary": "Reduce overhead and latency by combining related elements, activities, or responsibilities when separation creates friction."
  }
}